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Gamers Are More Aggressive To Strangers
TheClockworkSoul writes "According to NewScientist, victorious gamers enjoy a surge of testosterone — but only if their vanquished foe is a stranger. Interestingly, when male gamers beat friends in a shoot-em-up video game, their levels of the hormone plummeted. This suggests that multiplayer video games tap into the same mechanisms as warfare, where testosterone's effect on aggression is advantageous. Against a group of strangers — be it an opposing football team or an opposing army – there is little reason to hold back, so testosterone's effects on aggression offer an advantage. 'In a serious out-group competition you can kill all your rivals and you're better for it,' says David Geary, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, who led the study. However, when competing against friends or relatives to establish social hierarchy, annihilation doesn't make sense. 'You can't alienate your in-group partners, because you need them,' he says."
Can I be the first to say:!*(&^$*&^@!(&*)%&*)%&*1!@&
For the love of DEITY$ when will researchers stop doing stupid research!
If all y'alls weren't such retards, you'd have asked that question already. Suck it, LUUUUSERS.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
pause for a moment and say, "And you're just now realising this?"
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
I find that I feel bad if I kill someone on my own team by accident.
Then I feel better when I teabag them anyway. Laughter is definitely the best medicine.
Nowadays, there too many jocks passing themselves off as "Gamers"
-Darbacour
I always wondered why I am like that in games.
Time to go grief some more noobs on CS:S.
... they infer there have been studies about this regarding male interaction with strangers in other situations (war and sports). I'm curious how the results would have changed if they couldn't have heard their opponents at all. Or perhaps a different game. A PvP situation in an MMO? Maybe hardcore Tetris action. Either way, it's curious if they can work on harnessing these responses as part of a planned anger therapy or some such. Blow off steam nuking folks online to be civil IRL.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
What I'd really like to know is whether the surge of testosterone comes from actually killing someone who isn't a friend, or because you're playing against a relative unknown and you, on winning, gain elation at being greater skilled than them. Perhaps, against friends, people can't really feel they've outplayed them so they don't feel the elation.
Yet when team members played one another, the highest-ranking males tended to produce less testosterone than their defeated teammates.
A real interesting thing would be if one of these testosterone on kill guys gain godmode or play against incredibly dumb bots. See if the fact that it's basically shooting fish in a barrel will cause the testosterone surge to be repressed. It could just be the highest rankers just know exactly how to play against their former compatriots so they don't feel it's much of a challenge thus giving them less testosterone on kills.
"However, when competing against friends or relatives to establish social hierarchy, annihilation doesn't make sense. 'You can't alienate your in-group partners, because you need them,' he says.""
No I beg to differ!! annihilation will show them who is boss!
strangers give the best candy.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I think the conclusions they reached are pretty obvious, but of course "obvious" does not mean "scientifically valid", and I'm finding myself somewhat put off by their methodology here... rather than testing new variables as you suggest, I'd like them to start by eliminating the biggest confounding variable I noticed: is it possible they've just shown that victory as part of a team results in different testosterone levels than victory as an individual? WHY would they mix in such an obvious factor?!? How hard is it to just test both scenarios as 1v1... shooting your friend in the face vs. shooting some stranger in the face.
Killing people in a game is practice for killing people in a war. Everything you do is practice for your future. Do you plan to kill people on command of some general, in a country you can't find now on a map, to help Cheney's friends make profits from weapons?
It sounds like they are counting gamers as 'people who play games online' which naturally biases the sample towards people who enjoy beating strangers. I enjoyed LAN gaming a lot, but never got in to online FPS games because beating some random person who may or may not be a bot (or using various cheats) didn't seem as satisfying as beating someone in the same room (and, conversely, being shot by someone in the same room gave you a chance to express disbelief at their skill, or complain about their camping tactics). People who had the same reaction as me would not have been counted as 'gamers' for this study.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I wonder how long until we find this study (mis)quoted in another of those 'Video Games Turn Innocent Children Into Violent Killers!' type articles.
Can I be the first to say:!*(&^$*&^@!(&*)%&*)%&*1!@&
For the love of DEITY$ when will researchers stop doing stupid research!
Am I the only one that hopes you are also the last to say that? You know, for a "News for Nerds" site, there seem to be quite a few people who pop up for stories like this that seem to be against research for the sake of research. You'd think such a thing would be valued on this site. These are people trying to figure out what makes human beings tick, and this research seems to be showing a correlation between the intensity of an unconscious physiological response (hormonal, in this case) to nearly identical behavior (i.e. the game) in differing social situations. That may not be a big deal to you, and in the long run it may turn out to be a very small thing in our understanding, but it still helps to expand our body of knowledge and possibly provide directions to be looking in future research. How can you call such a thing "stupid"?
And here I thought nerds were the type of people who would support the seeking of knowledge and the establishment of data. :-/
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
And psychologists and endocrinologists are responding to that by saying, "If you knew this, then show us the data you have correlating testosterone response to a near identical stimulus in varying social situations."
I wasn't aware that there were people out there studying anthropological endocrinology. Feel free to link to the studies upon which they base their knowledge. Because otherwise, this "common knowledge" had not yet been established as data, and history shows many examples of common knowledge failing in light of actual empirical observation.
Even if this particular study isn't complete or perfect (I haven't read the actual paper, but only the abstract, so I cannot say), it is a start at establishing data and helping us gain an empirical understanding of how we function.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Is it really a troll, or do you just disagree?
Gamers are people without survival instincts... The evolution will catch these guys sooner or later
http://205.158.108.67/stuff/toughguy_magazine.jpg
Without fear of a retorting beatdown, people get all aggressive. ... jerks
If every soldier got to personally know their enemy, there would be no war.
The lack of communication, and the alienation and dehumanization of the foe are what justifies violent recourse. If only saddam hussein hadn't denied Bush's friend request on facebook...
Clearly these people have never played paintball with my friends and I.
Either gamers only play with their friends or they all look like Arnold. But geeks don't have friends and they certainly doesn't look like Arnold! The mystery begins..
So it does the same as e.g. football. So it's the same as sports. So computer games are no more or less dangerous than sports in this aspect. So I hope anti gaming advocates don't conclude something to their advantage from this.
Indeed, very often the thing about good science is that what they discover may seem obvious in retrospect; in this case the notion that in social situations or warfare men treat enemies or strangers differently than friends and family is directly correlated to testosterone levels. Certainly the concept of social cooperation and distinctions are made between different groups of people is not new. However, coming up with data to show a cause for why this is so can be very useful, it can provide a model for making predictions, and can perhaps be applied to other areas of research. I think it's interesting that the video gamer's social interactions through the digital medium were just as 'real' to their bodies as it would have been to someone in a physical setting.
I'm guessing the Pure Pwnage crew wasn't the basis of this study.
This just shows that people are really competitive by nature, but not as much with a group they consider their friends; but even amongst friends you still can have a high competitive nature and a friendly game either it is video games or any regular sports friends can become enemies for a short time; it all depend on how serious the individual and their friends are. This to me just seems like who ever doing this study just like to prove games induce violent nature in people, but to me all it prove is that people are pre-wire to competitive.
In war, after you defeat the enemy, you rape the women. It's been going on since the Stone Age. I'd be interested in knowing the pros and cons of why we (men) do that. Also, and I did not RTFA, do women get a testosterone boost too?
it won't be as satisfying when i blow them to pieces?
dead uncle chester is going to regret leaving me that 12 gauge
On several of the sites that I will post to, I will go nicer on a postback to ppl that I know. If somebody that I consider a friend zings me hard, I tend to assume that they are having a bad day. OTH, if a stranger hits me, OR if I decide to take time and check their history and find out that they are on the negative side, then I hit harder.
My guess is that this is true of everybody here, if they think about it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I find this to be quite different. I've watched my husband, nephews, step-sons and brother-inlaws attempt to annihilate each other just for the shits and giggles of it all. Of course the best deaths are the most funny. But they are brutal to one another.
I guess I can chalk it up to that fact that they are a close knit set of men in one family and they are all talking on the XBox head sets when they play together. Interestingly enough though, if you watch the teenage boys who are rather skilled, the general observations is they tend to get mad really quickly if their older less skilled counter-part family members have a good game and kick their butts. That's when I've seen or heard the aggression. They don't like to lose to family.
But when it comes to strangers, I don't often get to observe thatm that much, but what little I have seen is aggression just to win. And when they don't it the language of sore loser that I hear. Rarely do I hear "...that was an awesome match".
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
I think this greatly supports some of Joseph Campbell's work where he discusses that it is much easier to kill when we reduce the target to an "it". When we have some sort of connection or reverence for the life of something else it becomes a "thou" and is difficult to kill without somehow justifying yourself. The same thing happens in the media during a war. In order to get people to accept a war you must first turn the "thous" into "its". Does anyone recall the reports of Nazis throwing babies out windows or Iraqis killing Kuwaitis in their cribs. I'm not denying the possibility of these things happening but just saying the reports are necessary in fueling sentiment for the war.
China learned this little tidbit of human nature at Tienanmen Square. The tank unit that wouldn't roll over the guy was a unit made up of troops from Beijing. They've since fixed that by assigning units from the outer provinces to the city.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
I find it very interesting how gamers react so such studies. First they imply the study revealed that gamers are more aggressive, which is no implication of the study. Then they talk like they want to disintegrate these scientists right away (which sounds very aggressive). But I guess the whole thing is, when you loose in a game (online, a offline board game, or soccer/football etc.) you always get a little bit depressed while the winning team will be happy. This is obviously a normal reaction. However, it is not normal to ran than out with a gun and kill some stranger. But this has a complete different cause. Isolation, absent acceptance by society and other species-inappropriate environment settings. And that has nothing to do with the result of the study.
The Swedish king Karl XI has this figured out already in the 17th century when he organised his forces so that people would fight side-by-side with brothers, cousins and people from the same region as you are from. This improved morale and made people less likely to flee the battlefield as you knew you could depend on, and wanted to support loved ones.
See also the Sacred Band of Thebes --
"Plutarch records that the Sacred Band was made up of male couples, the rationale being that lovers could fight more fiercely and cohesively than strangers with no ardent bonds .... The Sacred Band originally was formed of picked men in couples, each lover and beloved selected from the ranks of the existing Theban citizen-army. The pairs consisted of the older heniochoi, or charioteers, and the younger paraibatai, or companions, who were all housed and trained at the city's expense."
And let's not forget that it was the death of his "bosom friend" Patroklus that send the sulking Achilles into a murderous vengeful rage ....
-kgj
I could have told you this for free. Only study required is you to sit in my car while I'm stuck in traffic and make games about how I can "beat" the guy next to me.
My personal favourite is "Change lanes with him every time he tries to pass me"
People also thought it was common knowledge to catch the rhinovirus during the winter, hence its nickname the "cold", but there hasn't been any data to support this claim.
I for one, have a cold as I type this and I live in the very south of the United States where it's in the high 80s during the day :(
I don't know about you, but I used to love beating my friends at fighting games and FPS's. In fact, there were plenty of occasions we nearly got into fist fights over some cheap move in Tekken or Soul Calibur...
There's a major point hidden in there... we've seen for years politicians arguing that games cause violence and aggression.
Why aren't we seeing those same politicians complaining against sports ? Especially the particularly violent kinds like boxing, wrestling and ice-hockey ?
I mean, if watching a violent movie or playing a violent game is going to turn you into a killer... how is actually beating somebody unconscious better ?
But I guess we haven't seen a lot of convicted killers trying to palm off the responsibility for their crimes on Don King, it's just easier to blame EA maybe ?
Our society actively encourages children, particularly boys, to engage in one form of aggressive, violent and competitive behavior against their peers, and if they think about it at all, believes it a harmless way to burn off rage with fairly little risk of real harm (odd, last I checked you got a lot more sports-field injuries than gaming, and RSI is a much less damaging injury than a broken knee). While another form of harmless acted-out aggression is deemed to somehow worsen those same hormonal and societal stresses ?
Isn't this perhaps the single best argument yet against censoring games ? If we are going to censor them for potentially leading to violence, we must surely ban anybody under 18 from doing wrestling or boxing (or watching matches on TV), and probably American Football, ice-hockey and in fact
any other contact sport while we're at it...
There is no argument about the one that doesn't apply to the other (sports are *more* immersive than games, you are actually DOING it, not just pretending) - so since the very procensorship crowd is the same people who lament that some of us just don't LIKE sports and never did - well it does sort of leave them without a leg to stand on.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
of ganking.
I knew that gankers were compensating.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Do you live in the US? The US is a huge mix of people, who all don't really spend time mixing. Going from state to state, to a US citizen, it's often like venturing to a whole new world. Going from the suburbs to the inner cities is night and day. I live in Pennsylvania, and we have an old joke that PA is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between... it's 100% true! Socially and physically central PA is very "country." And to top it all off, we have violent and deep oppositions politically between our two major political parties. These type of differences have existed since 1776.
For most of our history, the US has had deep divisions between difference areas, races, and classes. I contest the assertion that the north "knew" the south and vice versa, and that the UK parliment "knew" the colonies on a personal level, especially since they were separated by such large distances. When it comes to politics, I myself have been annoyed at those "backwards uneducated hick southerners" and I'm sure there are plenty of southerners who are annoyed with "those rotten liberal hippie commie yankee northerners." This is just dehumanizing speech that makes us look at each other as obstacles to a goal rather than as humans with feelings and needs and rights.
We've done it to each other for years and we keep on doing it, because that's the one thing that unites us, our willingness to call each other names for our slanted political ideals.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
working at Homo Depot laying tile. Although maybe I'm just over-reacting to your strange post, but I'll vouch for a double-H Wrestling Wildlife Federation beatdown on your Jew donkey.
LATER THAT EVENING, DINNER WITH AGENT SMITH--
Smith: whatever you want, user #1335013.
1335013: and this time I want to be more important than that gay goatse pornstar you idiots shamed me into since failing to capture Gnutella.
Smith: Access codes to gain more modpoints on Slashdot(?)!
1335013: I told you, I don't have them, but I can get you the man that does.
Smith: Malda.
1335013: (!)?
I mean look at them. They would kill all of us just to get more of us poor unenlightened whites just to take more of our beach sand to hoard in their countries. You don't see many whites except the child sex slaves and indentured women that thought to preach Christianity to their royals. The fact stands that they are intolerable to anyone that isn't of their same market persuasion to hoard sand or even different skin color. Even in the Q'uran, Mohammed jests at Black people with the detrimental slogan "raisin heads" and even convinces all his fellow RAIDERS that "to dream of a black woman is a sign of a curse."
There's one thing you'll be seeing them hoard next, and that's nuclear bombs sold to them by their second-cousins Israel through their Mousad to bomb us poor productive whites just because our almighty Good through Jesus the Christ emphasized Science to be the better study rather than superstition.
This goes to prove the importance of 'anonymity' in the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
The privilege of rape without criminal justice returned to the raper, as to reward U.S. Army personel to be more thorough and expedient to combat and remove the freedom fighters remotely and localy defending their country from Roman Civil jurisprudence/effects encroaching on their acceptable monarchy?
I vastly remember how The King of England enacted the rite of Prima Nocta in warship over Scotland and how ritefuly the Scots along Irish like myself promptly blasted each of you same-thinking motherfuckers out the friggin' land locke.
You are your parentage perhaps?
From the article, it doesn't sound like they specifically recruited guys who were already playing online games. They recruited students, and then assigned them to play a multiplayer videogame. And each team sat together within earshot of their opposition.
So I see no reason to dismiss the effect as a selection bias.
And there are no responses to this. How sad...
You do make a good point - we as nerds/geeks/freaks/spazoids/trolls/what-in-gawds-name-is-THAT! should be interested in social engineering and organizational theory because we as humans do form uber-organisms (corporations, cliques, fan clubs, etc) and the biology of such gestalt entities is just as fascinating as biology is. However I suspect that underlying currents of materialist-influenced misogyny still pervade the mostly boy-dominated domain of Geekdom, and therefore there will still be the over-emphasis on investigating physical/material-based phenomena with observable results. Too many of my fellow geeks that I know view social sciences and psychology as being voodoo and "girl stuff"
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
we would all be machines. Same mindset, same rationale, same everything. And you would be completely right in your statement, "I have seen no reason to believe that any of those professions have made any progress whatsoever towards rigor and objectiveness". However, you are wrong. You are displaying sentimental bias towards established sciences with over a century of accumulated data, studies, established rigor, processes, and controls.
The truth is, humans are complicated creatures and consciousness is damn near impossible to quantify. We have egos, subconsciousness, and worst of all - individuality, which makes laboratory-based attempts to quantify, isolate, and predict psychological behavior very difficult. But, social scientists like psychologists and sociologists have contributed greatly to our collective knowledge through rigorous studies with statistical tools that meet very strict guidelines. You are correct in that there are plenty of sloppy studies out there, but bear in mind that the material sciences have plenty of those as well. I'm sure you can find all sorts of sloppy social studies to support your personal bias/belief that social sciences are quackery. But have you ever considered challenging your beliefs and looking at experiments that are rigorous and have been tested and found to be valid and thorough?
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Yeah, but stereotyping the entire middle east isn't racist at all. Good job, I'm sure Jesus is proud of your illogical hatred.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Revolution prevents a people from paying a valid debt to another, like how Brittain would not assent to the locals in discharging obligations and compensating with interest the properties that are part and parcel and fixture to their ancestry to which Brittain would more to ransom and compete than integrate in kind.
Back in the alleged American Revolutionary War, the Continental U.S. was devaluing currency to use for gaining a controlling interest in the political hegemony inherint in townships and boroughs flying either Royal or statehood flags. In response to the continentals printing money to buy from the Brittish their colonial holds over the many estates among the Several States, the Brittish began seizing anyone violating those original contracts payable in gold. Likewise, the libeled natives (alleged colonists) retaliated to Brittain for not unhanding the peculiar jurisdiction among Americans by vacating the Roman Civil law that tied them together despite 5 months of sea travel. I say "alleged colonists", because America has been around long before the United States (associated and re-associated 1754/1776/1812/1861/1871/1933/1975) and the Brittains ever endured.
It's not difficult to kill family and friends in disputes over property ownership, wearby the subject is critique of holding an artifact or tool, or simply the character of the one so continuing with his interest despite the effects of it upon others (ie radiation, outhouses, red hair...Slashdot, etc).
To debate you further, in the easiest sense of the American Civil War please research Francis Lieber on how both his sons were at eachother's necks in opposite armies on the same field and why Abraham Lincoln chose him to author the Lieber Code concerning martial law conduct that is inherint in the Emergency War Powers Act that drives the United States and Presidential Executive Orders today that can trace the fine red thread back to the screw-ups in the 1776 fiasco.
50 feet under the boat, on my outrigger. Guess I should troll faster, http://205.158.108.67/stuff/toughguy_magazine.jpg
It's called trolling. The troll usually does not believe or care about anything it says. What it cares about is the little thrill of power it feels when it 'makes' someone respond. Its goal was to gain control of someone else, even briefly, to cover up the utter lack of control the troll feels in its own life. It made you angry enough to admit that you are angry.
Your feelings are troll food. YHBT. YHL. HAND.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
What are you responding to, you character assassin? All those shit countries keep their SUBJECTS in the dark ages to control their indepence from royalty. I have the same to say about Brittain, Congo, Ethiopia, and the chainchinks over on Asia.
What are you trying to say about Jesus that good ol' warlard Mohammed already disclosed as being the bastard child of a whore that 'made it' with carpenters?
Respond to the U.S. Department of Energy on charity towards the middle-east because I tolerate them equaly as they tolerated me when they bounced me through the rape chambers when I was on construction work with a friend that has since left his native land.
Dude, stop huffing paint. Immediately. Oh and BTW, Jesus hates you.
Hmmm? You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying!
If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan."
But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I suspect that they can and do, and so I'm currently conducting research in the local cemetary to prove it.
Yes, sorry. I was the original poster of that stupid message, and I regret it fully now. I admit I only have a 2nd grade education and that daddy used to touch me when I was young. (But secretly, I really liked it!) I actually love the Islam religion and don't know why I was saying bad things about it. I am really messed up and need to see a psychologist. I also drink my own urine, and eat human hair.
Ah, but there is a distinct difference between harm and competition. I know many people who are *extremely* competitive with siblings, for example. In terms of LAN games, I have friends who prefer the "band together/teamplay" group, whereas others are more of the "prove yourself against your friends/FFA deathmatch" type. The latter - IMHO - seem to be more competitive with friends.
Skipping video-games, the same could be said for the two old codgers who regularly play chess. Competition at some point gets so deep that you'd think that they almost hate each other, rather than being friends outside the game.
Am I the only person that prefers making their friends cry? It's just not as fun drinking a strangers tears.
... in these researches. you know, the tone that they like to push into everything concerning evolution.
like, the guy doesnt like beating down people from close circle while establishing 'social hierarchy', because he feels he 'needs them'. it cant possibly be because people may not like hurting the ones close to them or making them sad.
impossible. it HAS to be something pragmatic, darwinian survivalist, cutthroat, cold, heartless. there should be NO emotion that has positive undertones involved. for, if there is, then, well, the whole research would be ridiculed and invalidated or something isnt it. people cant have positive emotions. every shit has to be tied into something pragmatic and self serving.
i have two words to say to that :
fuck that.
Read radical news here
I used to play Halo with a group of friends during our "Halo Sundays" gatherings and we had much fun killing each other via LAN.
Then Halo 2 and xbox "live" came out and I had the ability play online versus strangers. The increased levels of hormones was very noticeable because I experienced physical effects such as clenching my teeth and simply felt overall quite a lot more aggressive and in a "kill, kill, kill" frame of mind. I didn't like being in that state so I stopped playing. I thought it was just adrenaline, but testosterone obviously makes more sense with the aggression aspect of it.
It took me a half hour on the phone to get them to finally cancel my "live" account.
That's because most of them live in a dark basements like this.
Does not apply if your name is Stef Murky
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Say, for example, the British military came to your town so their government and businesses to take control of your city and natural resource, coal. They shoot and bomb a large number of buildings, roads, homes, and people; all while saying they are only targeting resisters. On the South side of your town the military men rape the women; on the North side of town they don't. If people from a neighboring state came to help you fight the invading military, would you accept their help? Which do you want to attack more, the killer-rapers or the killers?
For bonus points: find 5 issues in the above that are way more important than which soldiers you hate more. Two cent opinion: soldiers in war are not in a "normal" situation, they are in insane circumstances and react accordingly. Their leaders are responsible for the soldier's actions.
Of course, now I may just be a girl, and thus interested in the mechanics of social interaction... but I can't believe that boy geeks and nerds have been so abjectly turned off to social mechanics that they don't want to learn about how it works. Here we are, a subculture of people who love to pull things apart and see how they work... but we don't want to pull apart the ephemeral and latch it into concrete physiological responses?
Wish I had mod points. Deborah Tannen's 'You Just Don't Understand' does a good job of identifying patterns in social interactions; IMHO, patterns lead to hypotheses, hypotheses to experiments, experiments to data. Frankly, a woman had to mention this book and bring up the topic to me before I was motivated to apply analysis and pattern-matching to social interaction and observation of physiological responses -- so good job bringing up the application of the scientific principle to something traditionally categorized as touchy-feely. Lie to me*, police procedurals, American Scientific Mind and Psychology Today, etc. seem to indicate that this awareness is moving out of the lab and into mainstream society, though.
I modded the grandparent post down. There's really nothing in the post to "disagree" with, it's just a bunch of empty, stupidly written "fuck the man" ranting. Think of my mod as a way of saying "That's nice, now shut the fuck up."
That said, I routinely downmod posts I disagree with. I use my mod points as I please, and nothing amuses me more than seeing some dicktard get all huffy and self-righteous about "censorship," because his precious snowflake of a comment was bitch-slapped into the minus-one abyss. ^_^
By the way, I've been doing this for years, so it looks like the metamods are on the same page as me. XD lol
I find interest in the notion of aggression linked to unfamiliarity. Regarding competitions such as war, athletic events, debates, video games, etc. it would be reasonable to expect that one would feel a sense of reassurance and safety with their team - full of people they know. Along with this, on the other end it would be expected that when emotions of anger are felt, one would more willingly unleash them on a stranger than a friend. This works in MOST cases... Since the main topic in discussion is video games, I'll touch on this there. I think the truth of this notion depends on the type of game in question. Violent games (war games, zombie-hunts, etc...) that evoke less of a friendly-yet-competitive edge and more of a "fight-for-your-life" sort of feel, would make aggression towards enemies or strangers or opposing teams soar to new limits, and likewise bonds between allies. During a football video game however, the attitude changes slightly. In this situation a gamer would be more likely to want to beat his friend and prove superiority and skill, and it would almost be less of a thrill to verse a total stranger. I completely agree with the existence of a connection between these topics, I just question whether its an exclusive connective. I don't think it is.
in other news: Water is Wet!!!
Get Virtual.
1) The only thing measured was testosterone before and after, not aggression during. Pretending something was measured that wasn't is a no-no.
2) The only people studied were the gaming group. Making the comparison "gamers are more aggressive" when you have nothing to compare to is almost as insulting as it is stupid.
Why is this bad reporting being promoted? Why not just link the original interesting article about the effect of competition on testosterone levels?
If only saddam hussein hadn't denied Bush's friend request on facebook...
Sorry but that's just utter BS.
So you're saying a bug in Facebook started the Iraq war?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer